Aeolian processes on the terrestrial planets

Abstract

Aeolian dune fields have been described on Earth, Mars, Venus, and Titan. The amount and fidelity of data being returned from orbiting spacecraft and landers have enabled a new era in aeolian studies. This progress report presents an overview of the latest planetary geomorphic studies characterizing aeolian processes on extraterrestrial surfaces. Our understanding of aeolian processes on other planetary surfaces comes largely from Earth analog studies, along with wind tunnel experiments and theoretical modeling. However, an important difference is that unlike terrestrial dunes most dunes on Venus and Mars are composed primarily of basaltic particles. Additional research is needed to understand how basaltic particles weather both physically and chemically so that it will be possible to apply traditional sedimentological concepts, such as sediment maturity, to understanding aeolian processes on Venus and Mars. It may also be possible to characterize sediment maturity and provenance through remote sensing data once we have a better understanding of basaltic sediments. Although there have been a variety of dune forms identified on the surfaces of the other terrestrial planets, the only dune form found on all of them is linear dunes. Even though linear dunes are the most common dune forms on Earth, we currently have a poor understanding as to how they are formed, and additional work is needed to understand these features.

Recent developments in planetary Aeolian studies and their terrestrial analogs

“…The wind is the primary present-day (non-fluvial) agent of movement of materials on terrestrial planets with atmospheres (Craddock, 2011), particularly the Earth, Mars, Venus, and Saturn's large moon Titan. The growing number of spacecraft contributing to the exploration of Mars necessarily focuses considerable attention on the study of Mars, but the dunes on Titan have been receiving increasing attention since their discovery by the Cassini spacecraft in 2004.…”

Distribution and Morphologies of Transverse Aeolian Ridges in ExoMars 2020 Rover Landing Site

“…Aeolian processes have played a significant role in landscape evolution and development of surficial features on planets with considerable atmospheres such as Earth, Mars, and Venus [1]. For Mars, the substantial influx of orbiter, lander, and rover imagery and geophysical data with continuously improving resolutions in the past two decades have largely facilitated our understanding of the relict and active aeolian processes and landforms, proving aeolian processes to be one of the dominant surface-modifying agents on Mars [2].…”

The western Qaidam Basin as a potential Martian environmental analogue: An overview

“…As opposed to the ongoing studies in planetary aeolian morphologies [Zimbelman, 1986;Bourke et al, 2010, Craddock, 2012Zimbelman et al, 2013], wind streaks on Earth are relatively unexplored and understudied [Cohen-Zada et al, 2016]. Because of the presence of liquid water and vegetation on Earth, many aspects of aeolian erosion are much harder to assess when compared to Mars [Cohen-Zada et al, 2016].…”